The present invention relates to a method and system for inter-vehicular communications and information reporting.
As people become more reliant on the Internet, the need arises to access the Internet from within a moving vehicle, such as a car or truck. This capability is currently provided by laptop computers having wireless Internet connectivity, hand-held devices such as PDAs, and an increasing number of cell phones, and should soon be widely provided in vehicles as standard, built-in equipment. For example, General Motors currently provides a limited Internet based communications system built-in to its more upscale vehicles which is marketed as “OnStar.”
While the Internet can connect a vehicular traveler to a practically unlimited number of land-based computers, the computers have not been adapted to serve the special needs of the vehicular traveler. For example, there is often a desire, when traveling, to communicate with the unknown occupant of another vehicle that is in sight of the traveler. There is also often a desire, when traveling, to obtain specific local information that is useful to a traveler, such as local road status information, where the local information is provided or reported by travelers in other vehicles who are privy to the information. More generally, there is a need for a method and system for inter-vehicular communications and information reporting to serve the vehicular traveler.